Rockland workers fight pharmacy shutdown

Jan. 31, 2013

Brian Murphy, an employee of Med World, the company that runs the pharmacy at Robert L. Yeager Health Center in Ramapo, helps Myrnia Bass-Hargrove with her prescription Jan. 31. / Seth Harrison/The Journal News

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NEW CITY — A pharmacy in use by Rockland County government workers since the 1980s shuts down as of Friday, with union leaders vowing a court fight to reopen it.

County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef said the pharmacy’s closure will save taxpayers about $2 million annually.

From now on, workers and retirees will have to use a retail pharmacy and fork over a co-payment for their prescriptions.

“We’re just not going to operate it,” Vanderhoef said.

The issue now is whether Vanderhoef’s maneuver will stand up in court. Rockland CSEA President P.T. Thomas says he doesn’t think so.

“We are of the very strong opinion that the pharmacy cannot just be cut like that,” Thomas said.

The Rockland County Legislature passed a resolution to create the pharmacy service, which then became a part of contract negotiations in ensuing years, Thomas said.

He said wages and benefits were much lower in the 1980s and contributed to the creation of the service as a way to assist workers in the face of increasing living costs.

Rockland County Legislator Phil Soskin, D-Monsey, said back then, county workers gave up a self-insurance plan in favor of a different plan backed by the county. As part of the change, they were given a prescription service that required a $2 co-pay. Over time, the co-pay was done away with, he said.

Soskin said retirees and others on limited incomes would be hardest hit, along with people using expensive medications such as cancer-fighting drugs.

“It’s a problem,” he said. “Do you eat or buy medicine? It should be continued. It’s a negotiated benefit.”

Thomas said the union will head to court Friday to seek an injunction on the pharmacy’s closure on behalf of current workers. The state Civil Service Employees Association will do the same for retirees.

He also said the CSEA will file a complaint with the state Public Employment Relations Board, the agency that administers the Taylor Law, which governs labor relations covering all public employees in New York.

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The pharmacy has been used by current workers and retirees for maintenance prescriptions only. They had no co-payment on any of their prescriptions, with taxpayers subsidizing the service.

It took at least 24 hours to fill a prescription, and people in need of medicine sooner, such as antibiotics for a sore throat, always have used retail pharmacies that collect a co-pay.

The shutdown will not affect Summit Park Hospital and Nursing Care Center, which has its own pharmacy service.

Vanderhoef previously called for the pharmacy’s closure, in 2011 and 2012. His proposed county budgets provided funding only for it to operate for part of each year.

But each year, money was moved from a contingency account to provide a full-year’s service.

This time, Vanderhoef provided enough funds for the start of 2013, but he went one step further and killed the county’s contract with Med World, the company that ran the pharmacy.

“I guess he didn’t read the opinion from his own county attorney,” Rockland County Legislator Ilan Schoenberger said.

During the 2013 budget process, Schoenberger, D-Wesley Hills, sought an opinion from the Rockland County Attorney’s Office on whether cutting funding legally cut the pharmacy service.

The opinion, discussed by Schoenberger at a public budget discussion, was that the pharmacy had become an official benefit because it had been negotiated during past contract talks between the CSEA and the county. That meant the only way it could be changed, whether to require a co-pay or to shut it down, was through a negotiation, Schoenberger said.

“Everybody believed it had to be changed,” he said. “There had to at least be a co-pay. Free prescriptions could not continue. But it has to be negotiated.”